Finding the hope - from what you have lost

I stumbled upon this garden in Northern Ireland this summer. I had noticed it from the road some years ago but hadn't ventured in to investigate. To be honest, it was situated beside the Coleraine Council buildings and I suspected some tourist exhibit about the beauty of Northern Ireland or the north coast or a plaque on the history of the area. One grows so accustomed to everything being about commerce, money or even self-aggrandisement.  I have reasons for my cynicism.

If you want to find the most luxurious offices in Northern Ireland don't look at private corporations look at the council buildings in every single city location. You will be amazed at how much money has gone into council offices. Not facilities like hospitals, schools or universities, but these exquisite office suites.  Here are a few such council buildings but they are by no means unique, just large depressing symbols of how to waste public money.  The contrast between their opulence and the conditions suffered by the sick and elderly in our community is eye-watering.

Coleraine Borough Council Building

Derry and Strabane Borough Council Building

Ballymena Borough Council Buildings

But this particular garden was something entirely different. This was a garden called "Angel of Hope" and it brought tears to my eyes for a completely different reason.

It was a place for people to remember babies or children who had died.  Grief was edged on every memorial placed on white walls with heartbreaking words underneath speaking of the loss of a loved one. Many, many babies were remembered and sometimes pictures were included of beautiful smiling faces of those who were lost.  Poems like the one below spoke of the pain and seem to make it personal for even a passing viewer.

I walked around and read about these sweet souls. Love was tangible in every small picture or flower carefully placed and it made me realise that all this pain had always been there in our community. So many hurting hearts but without a tangible place to represent what had been taken too soon. Not a grave, not a place of sadness where the body lies, but a special place of love where all these children are remembered and celebrated by the family and the whole community.  Everywhere there were toys colourful bright toys placed under trees and beside paths and it spoke of the joy that young lives bring.

There was a time when if a mother had a miscarriage or stillbirth the baby was quickly disposed of in the hospital system and mothers were left grieving without anything tangible to show for those months of pregnancy and hope.  Now, in a more enlightened age, such babies are dressed in beautiful clothes and wrapped in blankets so that their parents and family are allowed to hold the lost one. Photos are taken and impressions made of tiny feet or hands that will be kept for a lifetime.  These acts of consideration and kindness, by medical staff, at this critical moment recognises the grief that must follow.  So to, do such beautiful gardens of hope in our communities. They are 1000 miles away from the commercialism and materialism we see around us daily. They speak of hearts, loss, bonds and love.  They remind us of what's really important and what we must never forget. At a time when the tendency in this world is to become desensitised, to the coarseness of public discourse and actions, it is so healthy to be reminded of the sensitivity and beauty that should be our birthright.

When there is love loss is unbearable.  Each death diminishes us all. Whether it is due to illness or disease.  Whether that life is taken from us by violence, accident or war the grief and loss is beyond words. But the fact that it is so colossal a loss must never be forgotten and such places remind of us of that.  Hearts need to be softened, not hardened.  Only by recognising the pain of loss and supporting those who experience it, everywhere around the world, do we cease to be part of the problem but instead become part of the solution.

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"Love is the spirit of life unto the adorned body of mankind, the establisher of true civilization in this mortal world, and the shedder of imperishable glory upon every high-aiming race and nation."

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from Bahá’í Writings

Missing Wavelengths?

The sound of the sea soothes. Its rhythm a mighty solace. When calm its frequency is slower (1/10) than the beat of the human heart. No wonder being beside it is such a source of comfort. Just like the baby in the womb is soothed by the thump, thump of their mother’s heart we too are comforted by the sea’s rhythm. We are bathed in such a noise from conception but it is only when we develop sensory organs do we properly hear them. Mind you, even without working ears the deaf can feel the vibration of sound through bone/floorboards/a balloon held in their hands so perhaps even before audio organs were fully functioning perhaps we felt the vibration in the womb of the nearby heart. As the ears developed in the womb the baby grows to recognise the mother’s voice and is found to respond to certain external music.

Sight too is developed in the womb and, like sound, we humans have a limited spectrum in which we can operate. Bees can see the magnetic field, bats can use sound in order to navigate. Visible light is our piece of the electromagnetic spectrum. We may feel the heat of an infrared wavelength or suffer the sunburn of UV rays or even use devices to enable us to hear radio waves or microwaves but the visible spectrum is where our eyes excel.  Everything we see is due to this tiny fraction of the whole spectrum. If the whole of the electromagnetic spectrum was laid out before us as 100 toilet rolls (with each roll having 1000 sheets) we can only see three and a half sheets (0.0035%).

We pride our ability to see our surroundings, perceive and then understand. We see the rain clouds, understand we may need our umbrella and take it with us. So closely entwined is this with understanding that we even use the phrase “I see” interchangeably with “I understand”. To see or perceive to take in information, process it and make use of that knowledge is almost too seamless for us to even notice. 

Humans are sufficiently adaptable to allow one sense to help another. Some blind people have taught themselves to use echolocation to understand their surroundings via sound waves. These waves can produce reflections which tell them how close obstacles and structures are. This ability can be taught relatively quickly especially to children. Because we as sighted individuals learn about our environments using vision, we often do not readily perceive echoes from nearby objects. However, with training, even sighted individuals with normal hearing can learn to avoid obstacles using only sound, showing that echolocation is a general human ability.

Our intelligence has permitted us to make use of other areas of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our WiFi, mobile phones, radios etc have helped us to make inroads into other sheets of those rolls of toilet paper we spoke of earlier. X-rays in medicine give us the ability not to see our surroundings but our internal body structures.  Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is another type of scan that uses strong magnetic fields and radio waves to produce detailed images of the inside of the body.  Our ingenuity has allowed us to glimpse how other creatures hear and see. Elephants can hear very low-frequency sounds, we cannot hear, through their huge feet and can pick up such invaluable information as the early low-frequency rumbles of an approaching tsunami or earthquake. Dolphins can hear a much broader range of frequencies than we humans.  Our ears can only pick up frequencies from 20 Hz to 20 kHz whereas dolphins can hear from 20 to 150 kHz. Their hearing is up to 7 times more sensitive than the human ear.  Perversely, the humble moth has the best hearing of any creature (The greater wax moth's hearing goes up to about 300 kilohertz). Eagles have better eyesight than humans. They can see eight times further than us and see shades of colour we cannot.  They can even see ultraviolet light which helps them see bodily traces left by their prey. 

We may have extended our ability to function in other spaces of the full sound spectrum or electromagnetic spectrum but there is a range (a bit like the range of musical instrument) that we are designed to see and hear with our own faculties. Even our eyesight was designed to see not only close-up but also the distant horizon. Perhaps to distinguish close up edible seeds from toxic ones or to discern prey or spot predators approaching from afar. If we deny ourselves the full panorama of life around us we can damage our eyesight. So, too much screen time sacrifices our farsighted abilities.

The frequencies we hear and see have consequences in our brain. Not only in how we interpret but what feelings they engender. Beauty in nature awakens emotions within us not just factual realities. A wonderful piece of music can elevate our spirit or soothe our distress. If we could understand the lasting impact what we see and hear has on human beings we might be more refined about what we tune our ears to or focus our vision on.

The senses are doorways to mind, spirit and body. They can be extended and developed or curtailed and deformed. Our daily choices decide what benefits or deficits we experience therefrom. To be in nature surrounded by its sounds is a source of healing. Music does indeed soothe a troubled breast. This world we were born into is a feast for us both acoustically and visually. But when depressed we can sometimes not even see the beauty around us.

Spirituality is the ability to walk the path that nurtures your real progress. Our senses guide us but it is in understanding what we hear and see that our real development takes place. If we choose not to investigate the truth with heart and mind then we impede our progress and that of the society around us. It’s as if our physical senses are merely portals to investigate reality. The real magic happens when and how all that is processed and acted upon.

If we see the suffering of others we have some choices.

1.   Avoid - make sure we are not exposed to such sights again. news/disaster/coverage/tragic events. Akin to the ostrich hiding its head in the sand. Or choosing to See no evil, hear no evil or see no evil.

2.     Cynical self-interest - Feel no sympathy with those ‘others’. As long as one’s own family is fine why be perturbed by those of others. Train yourself to be selective about who you will respond to, particularly those in despair or need.

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3.  Feel helpless - Watch so much of the news, what’s going wrong with this world that you become angry and feel both despair and hopelessness.

None of these choices ends well.  We do need to become informed of what is happening in the world good and bad. When suffering and injustice occurs it helps to take some steps to remedy it. It could be small but taking action puts power back in your hands. Inaction fuels your own helplessness. Your actions, however seemingly futile, can inspire others. If mistakes happen you can learn to adjust and correct. Progress can be made through action.  From the good you observe in this world best practice can be absorbed. Inspirational accounts (factual and informed) can give powerful examples of how others have already perceived a problem/injustice/wrong/suffering and acted. They fan your flame to take action as a response to what comes. Not reinforce acquiescence and acceptance of the status quo however damaging.

If life can be likened to the electromagnetic spectrum we need to recognize the source is abundant. We are bathed in this constant pouring out of energy from above. It fuels our food and fills our bellies. It warms our body and enables our eyes to see. All of that is designed to benefit the human race and all the creatures that share this planet with us. To be selfish with resources, money or acquisitions is the opposite of this demonstrated abundance. To abuse, this planet and people for individual gain is to reduce one’s spirit to the lowest level of existence.  We can bury ourselves in materialism to such a degree that we no longer see the sun or feel its heat. We have burrowed into dark places that take us down not up.

The electromagnetic spectrum and the wavelengths of sound demonstrate our limited ability to even see or hear what is actually out there. The fact that other creatures can hear and see more than we can is a mighty reminder that this world is not just for us human beings. It is filled with living entities who are designed like us to inhabit this wondrous planet. They hear and see things beyond our reckoning. Some can even see the polarization of light. Many can use the Earth’s magnetic field to orientate themselves on this sphere. If this is so, is it not cavalier to pollute this world so beautifully designed for all species, not just the human race.

The sad thing about this preferring ourselves over all living creatures, our nation over other nations, our tribe over the next valley’s tribe or even our family over our neighbours is that this process of self-interest causes even further fractioning. Until the very members of our own families can become ‘others’.

Hearing is indeed selective! If this world was designed to function in harmony then just like music we need all the various notes and resonate frequencies to come together.  To recognize that each of us is only a part of the whole. The principle of oneness must be owned if we are to turn the clock on this ‘otherness’. 

If oneness of humanity is the pivot then the further we move from this principle (that point) the more unbalanced that moment becomes. The larger the distance the bigger the destabilization that takes place.

Once we have a vision of the world as one then the model of the human body illustrates that there are many different organs with remarkably varied functions within it. The unity it exhibits underscores the need to grasp the whole. Every part working together for the health of the human body. Fuelled by a mighty muscle, the heart, beating the lifeblood through intricate tubing but coordinated by a brain that feels, senses and responds to your needs, urgent or long term. If this is the model then humanity has to be seen as one system. No part can be allowed to become infected, malnourished or damaged without fundamental injury to the whole. Every action whether it be marshalling immune defences or controlling temperature has the good of the whole as it’s overarching goal.

Our upset at the chaos and turmoil around us is not a thing to be ignored or suppressed or be distracted from. When we see the suffering of others and feel distress it is because you know at a vital level there are no ‘others’. You subconsciously feel united with this world you live in. You may not see every wavelength or hear every frequency but you feel your connectedness. Celebrate this intuitive knowledge and hold it close.